MobyGames News

New 'scraping' added for PSN games - help us out!

Good news - thanks to our leader coder Tracy Poff, we've now added PlayStation.com game entries (such as this one) to URLs that can be placed directly into our 'scraper' to automagically get/upload promotional screenshots. We also still allow PlayStation Store URLs like this one, but we discovered that PlayStation.com entries often have different or better promo screens.

This means any user (including you!) now has the ability to auto-scrape from Steam, PlayStation Store, PlayStation.com, Steam, iOS Store, Google Play Store, and Nintendo eShop for promotional screenshots on any existing game entry. Just go to the entry, hit 'Contribute' and choose 'Promo Art' and it'll give you example URLs to enter.

It's our impression that Steam (for existing games in our DB!) has been fairly well-scraped by our users already. But Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Store/PlayStation.com still have lots of work to be done, so if anyone would like to help out, then we'd really appreciate it!

(In the longer-term, we'll be working on auto-scraping entries we don't have in the DB at all yet, with your help, but that's not for a few months!)

Although a lot of MobyGames' history of archiving images has been around scanning in items (like covers!), it's also important to grab and make accessible newer digital art. Which is why we'd like to highlight & praise Infernos' work grabbing 'fansite kits' and wallpaper.

Particularly popular in the early to mid 2000s, 'fansite kits' (for example, Driver: Parallel Lines, Far Cry 2, & Grabbed By The Ghoulies) were sets of screenshots, concept art & icons/avatars that were downloadable from game websites to be used by fans. And many of those links are now broken. Infernos is grabbing ZIPs of them off third-party filehosting sites - plus getting 'lost' wallpaper via the Wayback Machine - and archiving them on MobyGames, so they can easily be found, referenced, and available via image search link.

Go check out some of his recently added promo images, and reminder - with these promo sets, you can always click on an image to get its original hi-res version!

We're happy to announce that MobyGames' new screenshot grabbing/'scraping' functionality is now available to all users. This allows you to easily add Steam, PlayStation Store, Nintendo eShop, iOS, or Android (Google Play) screenshots to our 'promo images' sections.

As an example, you can see on the 'promo images' page for Mechanic Master that there's a new dialog box. Just hit the 'Contribute' button on any game page and add images and they will be added automatically, and you'll need to click through to submit them.

There are a few issues/exceptions - particularly around differences in regional Steam stores & with age gates for some of the stores, and we only grab from profiles with images, but it works in general. (Approvers working on the system early have submitted a LOT of the Steam releases in the DB already, but other stores - especially the Nintendo eShop - have been added to less, so check those out!)

[One other long-needed change that rolled out with this code update - you are now required to provide another URL as proof when you submit most item types that aren't 'scraped'. This helps us make sure the info is accurate, thanks! And thanks to Tracy Poff for all this coding work as per usual.]

Just a quick (but massive!) note of congratulations - Poland's very own Karsa Orlong just reached 100,000 MobyPoints!

He joined us only back in 2010, so to be the 9th person in the history of the site to make it to 100k is SUPER impressive. He's also getting closer and closer to his goal: "Trying to add all commercial Polish video games to MobyGames' database." (While doing a bunch of extra approvals and work along the way!) Thanks again to him...

We only announced this section in June 2016, but we're delighted to announce that we have over 100,000 images added to the promo images section on MobyGames.

Many of these are automagically 'scraped' from major stores (Steam, iOS, Google Play, etc!), which is still important since these screenshots change and sometimes disappear over time. But a large number are also grabbed from other sources, like '90s FTP sites or even press CD-ROMs. And MobyGames' high Google ranking means the images often get prominently displayed for Internet users to check out and use. So... great work, all contributors who made this happen!

(We're planning more ability to contribute other types of images to MobyGames soon, including a way to add magazine advertisements, so watch out for an announcement on that!)

Tip Of The Day

Once you've added a game entry to MobyGames, make sure you go back and check it out once it's been approved. This not only catches any errors we may make, but lets you rate or review your new game entry as well. more tips

Current MobyGoal

3000 ZX Spectrum Games (94%)

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Takedown feels fluid, fast and meaty, and it feels great ramming into cars and causing widespread destruction in the fan-favorite Crash modes. Each car type and the variants they have feel relevant and not out of place unlike most racing games. Each car is different than the last.

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